Storage sheds are a necessity for lawn and garden care, as well as general all-around home storage space. Typically, garden tools and equipment are found either stacked into a corner of the garage, or bundled together and covered with a tarpaulin to protect them from the elements. During the off-seasons, lawn mowers, tillers and snow equipment often consume the available floor space of a garage, forcing the homeowner to park his/her automobile outside.
The prior art has proposed a number of different panel systems, or kits comprising blow molded or extruded panels and connector members for forming a wide variety of structures. Typically such systems are assembled into structures having a height sufficient to allow the owner to walk into the structure. Generally, such systems require extruded metal or plastic connector members having a specific cross-sectional geometry that facilitate an engagement between such members and one or more blow molded plastic panels having a complimentary edge configuration. Due to the nature of the manufacturing process, blow molded plastic components cannot be formed with the intricate shapes and/or sharp corners required for integrated connectors. In addition, blow molded plastic components are hollow and cannot be formed with the integral strengthening ribs and gussets possible with injection molding.
A particularly common structure for the connector members is the I-beam cross section. The I-beam defines free edge portions of the connector member which fit within appropriately dimensioned and located slots in the panel members. U.S. Pat. No. D-371,208 teaches a corner extrusion for a building sidewall that is representative of the state of the art I-beam connector members. The I-beam sides of the connector engage with the peripheral edge channels of a respective wall panel and thereby serve to join such panels together at right angles. Straight or in-line versions of the connector members are also included in the kits to join panels in a co-planar relationship to create walls of varying length.
The aforementioned systems can also incorporate roof and floor panels to form a freestanding enclosed structure such as a utility shed. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,866,381; 5,036,634; and 4,557,091 disclose various systems having interfitting panel and connector components.
Such prior art enclosure systems, while functional, nevertheless fail to meet longfelt needs of consumers to provide structural integrity combined with modularity and aesthetic appearance. The walk-in structures may be undesirable or unsightly where the roofs are visible over neighborhood fences or hedges. In some areas homeowner associations may not permit structures having an adequate height to allow the owner to walk into the enclosure due to the unsightly nature of the visible roof tops.
Paramount among such needs is a telescoping roof and pivoting door combination which allows items such as lawn tractors to be driven into the enclosure. Telescoping roof panels allow a low profile enclosure while still allowing an owner to walk into the enclosure for easy access to the contents. From a structural standpoint, the telescoping roof should be capable of easy installation after assembly of the wall and floor components, and be compatible with the walls. The wall and floor components should utilize a panel system which eliminates the need for panel connectors creating enclosure walls which resist panel separation, buckling, racking and weather infiltration.
There are also commercial considerations that must be satisfied by any viable low profile enclosure system or kit; considerations which are not entirely satisfied by state of the art products. The enclosure must be formed of relatively few component parts that are inexpensive to manufacture by conventional techniques. The enclosure must also be capable of being packaged and shipped in a knocked-down state. In addition, the system must be modular and facilitate the creation of a family of enclosures that vary in size but which share common, interchangeable components.
Finally, there are ergonomic needs that an enclosure system must satisfy in order to achieve acceptance by the end user. The system must be easily and quickly assembled using minimal hardware and requiring a minimal number of tools. Further, the system must not require excessive strength to assemble or operate. Moreover, the system must assemble together in such a way so as not to detract from the internal storage volume of the resulting enclosure, or otherwise negatively affect the utility of the structure.